Posts Tagged ‘coffee culture’

I was half an hour later than I wished arriving in London, then I went on a detour to Lower Marsh, behind Waterloo Station, to investigate Lower Marsh Market and happened upon a little coffee shop Love & Scandal.

As a result, I missed the cupping session and arrived part way through a fascinating talk on coffee, trees, forests, climate change and Ethiopia.

Kew Gardens have been carrying out mapping of the forests, how will be effected by climate change, how to mitigate, and will the coffee varieties survive.

To preserve the forest, we need to add value, we add value by encouraging the farmers to focus on quality not quantity, but this will only succeed, if the farmers have a market for their quality beans.

Union has been helping, they have improved the care of the trees, educated the farmers to only pick the ripest reddest coffee cherries, have improved the drying stations to use polypropylene netting not hessian and to establish a cupping station to enable the farmers to evaluate the quality of their beans. These must be in excess of 84 on a Q scale, anything above 80 qualifies as speciality coffee.

Oxfam are still stuck at zero, peddling the fairtrade scam with tubs of black powder to which you add hot water, poor quality coffee that makes people feel good because they have been duped into thinking they are helping growers.

Many would question the existence of the fourth and fifth waves.

This session people either loved or hated. I fell into the second camp.

Anthropologist David Graeber describes bullshit jobs. That was what I was seeing.

Generation Z, Millennials, I groan when I hear these terms. Are people hardwired within their DNA when they are born?

We live in a world where nearly everyone is interconnected through their smartphone.

This has huge implications on social behaviour.

What we should be discussing is this interconnection, and how it is used, not stereotyping behaviour on the basis of when born.

We saw it with Jeremy Corbyn, when he easily won two leadership elections, when despite the smears in the oligarch-owned and controlled media, he almost won a General Election.

PR and marketing show little understanding of this interconnection, how it functions.

It is also personal space, invade at your peril.

Social media is social networks, social, interaction, many to many. It is not broadcast, one to many.

Andy Street former boss of John Lewis has said you do not control it or own it, it takes you where it flows.

We are post-capitalism, capitalism ended in 2008.

Basic tenet of the market is that it self-corrects. it did not for 2008 banking crisis, the criminal bankers had to be bailed out.

Classic Marx, cost is land, labour and capital. We now have a fourth factor, information.

Information has a tendency to flow, you cannot unknow what you know. Like water downhill, it has a tendency to flow. Only artificial and draconian copyright and intellectual property rights restrict this flow, and in doing so, hinders innovation.

We have pure information products, e-books, digital music, that can be reproduced and distributed at near zero marginal cost. We have physical products with high information content, eg mobile phones.

The marginal cost of information products, or physical products with high information content, is falling exponentially.

Robots will take over at least forty per cent of jobs, or would if it were not for wages being held artificially low.

If we focus on brands, then at risk of cultural jamming, as Naomi Klein, author of the seminal No Logo, discusses in how we jam the Trump brand.

Nike went from producer of $70 retail sports shoes, factory gate price at the sweatshop factory of one dollar, to a lifestyle choice.

Apple likes to project a lifestyle image. What of the workers committing suicide?

Here I was a little baffled. Different methods were used by the competitors. Should everything not be equal, a level playing field? One method in itself, may produce a superior outcome. On the other hand, maybe that in itself tests the skill of the barista, with the coffee given, part of their skill, is to choose the method that will best bring out what the coffee has to offer.

Watching the competitors, intense concentration.

Then the judges, which coffee would they prefer? They indicated by pointing to or tapping the cup.

The judges explaining their decision, would have provided useful feedback.

World champion barista Martin Hudak World Coffee in Good Spirits Champion 2017 did an excellent job of making me think again with his excellent cocktail, but even then, use of Geisha.

More on Geisha, read the excellent must read God in a Cup.

The Japanese chilled filter I liked. Little recipe cards were available.

Many will be familiar with Oatly, or at least the name, as it was the wrap around for Caffeine 26.

My experience of fake milk was a cappuccino in Malaika, a vegan coffee shop. To say the least, it was disgusting.

A Greek barista was making himself a cappuccino. Would he make me one too please?

It was so-so. A marked improvement on my previous experience. Not great. Was this the coffee, the machine, the barista? A direct comparison with milk would have been useful.

The previous week, dinner with an Indian. She told me how they drink tea, half milk, lots of sugar. It sounded disgusting. I was shocked. I expected as I drink tea, fresh boiling water on tea leaves, no milk, no sugar.

Prana Chai was served ice cold. To me it was like a milkshake. A strange tea milkshake with spices.

Talking to the guys later as we walked to the DLR Star Lane Station, they said they were thinking of describing as tea latte, which seemed apt.

I do not know which award they are referring to, they are not one of the best coffee shops in Guildford, not by a long way, nor for that matter is Caracoli which has a board outside making that ridiculous claim. It is like awarding Costa the nation’s favourite coffee shop brand, completely and utterly meaningless.

Whoever drew up the short list of coffee shops for Surrey, clueless on coffee.

The coffee beans used, catering supply for the trade, no roast date.

Why bother? There is no excuse these days for using poor quality coffee, other than cutting corners and do not care what you serve.

The notice also says, locally sourced. Since when has Scotland been local? There are plenty of coffee roasters locally or in London they could have used, could have used if they cared and knew anything about coffee.

Adbusters Jam of the Week: Take back coffee culture: Support indie coffee shops.

Despite years of backlash, Starbucks can still be found on every corner around the globe. Its efforts to create an ethical image have done little to hide its dominating nature.

For centuries, coffeehouses were meeting places for philosophers, artists and activists. That’s where big ideas percolated and revolutions were hatched. But who wants to talk politics at Starbucks? Despite their attempts to manufacture an atmosphere of creativity and community, Starbucks remains an invasive presence in any neighborhood.

This week let’s break the corporate chain. Take a stroll in your neighborhood and zero in on one independent coffee shop you really like. Get to know the owner and the baristas who work there. Make it the place where from now on you connect with your community and your friends.

A couple of blocks from Adbusters, here in the Fairview Slopes neighbourhood of Vancouver, is a wonderful little indie coffee shop called Wicked. We go there almost every day, often to strategize and cook up campaigns . . . there’s something truly wonderful about being plugged in like that.

Old Town Square in Prague, girl drinking from a Starbucks takeaway. Another girl approaches, ‘scuse me, can you tell me where I can find Starbucks?

One of those moments when you want to cringe.

Starbucks at Prague Castle

Prague Castle, the location with the most stunning view over Prague, occupied by Starbucks. A grass terrace, a spiral stone staircase. They were even queuing.

Why do people drink this disgusting coffee? Do they have no self-respect? is there something wrong with their sense of taste?

And it is not only Starbucks, Caffe Nero, Costa, are no better.

Nor is there any excuse when there are quality indie coffee shops, with their own unique atmosphere, where the barista can tell you more than you ever wished to know about coffee, where the coffee actually tastes good, is usually sourced direct from the farms, where you meet interesting people, and they pay their fair share of tax.